When Wayne was a Whippersnapper: Sterling nearly had booming industry

By PAUL LOCHERStaff Writer Published: December 16, 2012 4:00 AM

STERLING -- This bastion of agriculture in northwest Milton Township had its shot at becoming an industrial center in the late 19th century. Unfortunately that shot proved to be something of a dud.

The village at one time boasted a wrench company, a cigar factory, a cultivator business and a rubber company, and additionally was a legitimate railroad hub. It very nearly had a glass company as well.

In 1880, natural gas was discovered in Sterling, carrying with it the prospect of being a promising source of heat that would meet the needs of a glass company. With the immediate availability of the railroad in the town, the development of a glass company at the site seemed the perfect venture.

And so in 1885, the Sterling Glass Co. was constructed on what is today Atlantic Avenue on the north end of town, on the north side of the street. Today the site is a farm field.

An architectural drawing from the project illustrates a factory with two smoke stacks, and an ancillary building, positioned along the railroad tracks with a string of horses and wagons heading both toward and away from the plant for deliveries and pick-ups.

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About the only evidence the plant actually existed at all is in the form of a photo postcard made in about 1886, the main smokestack having been built in 1885. A post card also survives showing the smokestack being torn down sometime between 1915 and 1917, with the building already gone.

What happened to the Sterling Glass Co.?

Probably most importantly, the gas vein proved to be of low volume, and without the natural gas, the company was in immediate trouble. And it was said that the manufactory and the smokestack were so large that their construction consumed all of the company's available capital.

Whatever the reason - or the devastating combination of the two problems - the Sterling Glass Company went out of business before it ever produced a piece of glass.

By 1894 the company folded and moved to Findlay where a large natural gas vein had been discovered, and where numerous other glass-making companies settled in the latter part of the 19th century. About a dozen glass manufactories were located there at the time the Sterling Glass Co. departed, its owners being actively enticed by Findlay to make the move.

It was reported in "The Creston Journal" the Sterling Banking Co. had purchased the glass works and was tearing it down, expecting to use all serviceable materials in the construction of a new bank building in 1917.

Source: Research paper by Wilbur Bowers, Creston, October 2006

Monday: William Jordan, veggie king

Reporter Paul Locher can be reached at 330-682-2055 or plocher@the-daily-record.com.